Page 86 of Hold the Pickle
We’re told as doctors that every system has a role. Endocrine. Respiratory. Digestion. Vascular. But the more I see people, the more I help them move from illness to recovery, the surer I am that every cell is imprinted with each experience. We’re not made of parts. We are the whole of them together.
When I kiss her belly button, she sucks in a breath. And when I slide a finger inside her, her hips move with me, her memory aligning this experience with the ones from our history, a miracle of nerve endings and conscious thought and automatic response.
Past. Present. Will there be a future?
I kneel over her, using my free hand to touch everything, ribs, breasts, neck, shoulders. I cup her chin and kiss her again,wanting to sear her senses, to create something every part of her body remembers and misses, and hopefully, drives her to come back to me.
She gasps, already shifting upward toward climax. I slide over her and slip inside, touching her all the while. Her hands clasp my back, and each of my cells is infused with her.
A tear glimmers on her cheek, and I know emotion has overtaken her, a mix of signals. Exultation and despair. Connection and the preparation for loss. She feels something for me. Her body shows the signs.
Even with the sadness, she still tightens around me. I ignore the stinging in my own eyes and move with her, more deeply and in sync with her movements.
We arrive at the pinnacle together, her words crying out in the room we will soon no longer share. I wish this moment would never end, that we could remain clutched together until the planet ceased.
But then she starts weeping, and I draw her close. Her upset gives me hope that our bond will be strong enough to weather this.
We lie side by side, arms so tight that we are bundled as one, until at last she pulls away. “I’ll sleep here tonight and leave in the morning. It doesn’t make sense to go now.”
I nod. We check on the cats, all snug with their mother, and go through our night routine that has become so familiar.
Then we curl together beneath her blue ruffles and my Optimus Prime, and sleep our last night in the same bed.
29
NADIA
Idecide not to warn my parents ahead of time that I’m coming home, or that I have cats.
It’s a grueling fourteen-hour drive. As the desert gives way to mountains, I realize that nobody knows anything about my life other than Dalton. Max knows about the cats, of course, but I haven’t told anyone that Dalton is more than a roommate.
Or how hard it was to leave.
Now I have no one to talk about it with.
I go in and out of crying as the hours tick by. The cats are hard, yowling and miserable. It’s difficult to get them to eat, or to use the litter box. Even though Catzilla has a big dog crate because of her size, it’s still not a great situation for the six of them inside it for hours.
By the time I pull up to my parent’s house late in the evening, I’m exhausted. But I can’t simply turn the cats loose. The two-story stone house is huge, with an enormous open bottom floor plus an upstairs of bedrooms. I have to figure out where to contain them, or four errant kittens will easily get lost.
I’m relieved nobody’s home, my mother’s Infinity gone from the garage. It’s a Friday night, so hopefully they are engaged inhours of something. Once the kitties are settled, I’ll text them about my return and the cats so they know not to accidentally set them loose.
My old bedroom has its own bath, a privilege of being the only girl with three brothers. My parents built this house when I was in high school, and only Axel and I officially lived here. The boys shared a bathroom in the hall when they stayed during summers off and, later, holidays.
This will be a good space, but I’ll have to kitten-proof everything.
I flip on the light. The cats are yowling but I don’t dare let them out until I have set up a litter box and food dishes.
“Hold on, hold on.” I set the crate on the floor by my bed. It’s all still very high school here, boy band posters on the walls, and oh, the Biebs is up there.
I quickly collect all my blown-glass figurines from my dresser and hide them in a drawer. Those wouldn’t last a hot second with the cats.
“One second, babies!” I say to them and race downstairs to my car. I snatch up the litter box and the paper bag with the kitty food and dishes.
I’m considerably slower heading back up. This is nuts. I’m dead on my feet from driving all day, cried out, and emotionally drained over leaving Dalton behind.
Over and over again, our last moments play in my mind, the painful goodbye at dawn, Dalton barefoot in his T-shirt and running shorts. He refrained from telling me he loved me again, as if wringing the words out of me might hurt even more.
No, don’t think about it now. Focus. Keep busy.
